New Palo Alto

Funding into New Palo Alto startups has grown nearly tenfold over the past five years, reaching $31.7B in 2025. With $19.2B raised in the first 5 months of 2026, the full year is on track to land at $46.0B, a +45% change versus 2025. The chart below shows annual funding totals; the latest year is annualised from observed-to-date data and represents the renderer's projection, not a closed quarter.

Yearly totals mask the quarter-by-quarter rhythm. The chart below shows New Palo Alto startups funding raised in each of the last 21 complete quarters through Q1 2026. All bars are actual closed-quarter sums, no projections, no in-progress quarters.

New Palo Alto's share of European venture capital tracks how much of Europe's startup capital lands in this market. In 2016, New Palo Alto startups accounted for 49.6% of European VC funding; by 2026 the share had reached 53.3%. The chart below splits each year's total European VC funding into New Palo Alto on the bottom and the rest of the market on top.

How capital deployed into New Palo Alto startups is split across round sizes. In the trailing four quarters, 54% of capital landed in scaleup ($100M+) rounds, 30% in breakout ($15–100M), and 16% across startups (under $15M). Each panel below stacks the canonical sub-bands across Q1 2022 → Q1 2026.

The most active investors in New Palo Alto startups ranked by the number of disclosed rounds they've participated in. Bpifrance leads with 801 rounds, followed by SFC Capital at 545. The table shows the top ten with their firm type, in-scope round count, total portfolio size, and headquarters.

Two views of leadership in New Palo Alto startups: the most-funded companies all-time on the left, and the hottest companies right now by Dealroom Signal on the right. Total-funding figures include all capital sources tracked by Dealroom (VC plus grants, project finance, and other instruments). Signal is Dealroom's live growth ranking, these are the firms with the strongest recent momentum across team, timing, growth, and completeness.

New Palo Alto set against the world's leading tech ecosystems, ranked by venture capital raised over the last 12 months. New Palo Alto is highlighted.

Over the last 12 months (through Jun 2026), the largest VC rounds in New Palo Alto startups reveal where capital is consolidating. The table below lists the 15 biggest disclosed rounds by amount, with date, company, round type, and lead investors. Funding events without a public amount are excluded; acquisitions sit in the Unicorns & Exits section.

Which industries pull in the most venture capital across New Palo Alto startups, and where does the New Palo Alto punch above its weight versus the rest of the world? Use the toggle to switch between absolute VC funding and each industry's over/under-index, and to change the time window. Over the last 12 months (to end of Q1 2026), AI leads at $18.3B, and the New Palo Alto over-indexes in Food, Fintech, Energy, and under-indexes most in Space, AI, Security relative to the rest of the world. Industries are tracked through Dealroom's industry tags, which overlap, a company spanning, say, AI and fintech is counted in both, so these show where capital concentrates, not a mutually exclusive split of the total.

New Palo Alto startups have minted 309 unicorns to date. Dealroom defines a unicorn as a company that has reached a $1B+ valuation or exit (verified and manually reviewed; other lists use different criteria, this is ours). Of those, 20 are decacorns, companies at a $10B+ valuation. The ecosystem also counts 375 thoroughbreds: companies generating $100M+ in revenue (a separate lens from unicorns, with some overlap). The chart below shows the cumulative count climbing each year, with the line tracking new unicorns minted in that year, peaking at 64 in 2021. On exits, the sector has produced 3,729 tracked acquisitions since 2010 representing $310.7B in disclosed value. Notable acquisitions in the data include ARM ($31.7B, 2016), followed by Verona Pharma ($10.0B, 2025), Interxion ($8.4B, 2019).

Entrepreneurship is a power law. Of every New Palo Alto startup founded, only a fraction attract venture capital, and far fewer climb each successive funding level. This funnel traces VC-backed New Palo Alto startups from first cheque through to the rarest valuation outcomes. Mouth figures are annual means (2010–2024); pool stages count VC-backed companies founded since 1990 by total funding.

New Palo Alto's universities are an engine room of the supercluster: the schools whose alumni found the most unicorns and venture-backed companies, and the research that spins out into them. The supercluster ranks first in the world for university-alumni startups.

The patent portfolio behind New Palo Alto startups: granted patent families, intensity per capita, and where the IP concentrates.